2024
installation, found objects

Everyday objects are subtle testimonies to life on the housing estate – fragments of space which, though seemingly ordinary, transform into carriers of memory documenting the past. Plastic garden chairs, once omnipresent in backyards, have almost completely disappeared from the urban landscape. Self-made fences – improvised structures that once provided a sense of separation and organised the space – have become relics of a distant everyday life. Each objects found on the estate is a fragment of history. Niedźwiednik’s slower pace of life is both surprising and fascinating, and the neighbourhood’s unique character appears resistant to the rapid change and gentrification irreversibly transforming other areas. This “archaeology of everyday life” reveals traces of old, often makeshift solutions that arose from the need to make the space liveable, providing evidence of local adaptive traditions.

Collective Memory is an installation comprising objects collected around the estate. Julia Taszycka’s works evokes collective imaginaries of the past, where abandoned objects take on new roles, reminding us of bygone decades and the daily strategies pursued by residents. This assembly paints a picture of Niedźwiednik as a place where time flows differently, in tune with local needs and the estate’s community-based character.

JULIA TASZYCKA (b. 1992) is a conceptual artist and creator of objects, installations, and video works. She graduated from the Faculty of Intermedia of the University of the Arts Poznań. As a Fulbright fellowship holder, she received an MFA in Studio Arts at New York’s Hunter College (2022). Taszycka was a finalist for the Hopper Art Prize (2023) and was shortlisted for the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant (New York, 2023). In 2022, she was an artist-in-residence at LMCC (Governors Island, New York), and from 2024 to 2025, she will participate in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program (New York). She has taken part in numerous exhibitions, including at M 2 3 (New York, 2023), 35A Gallery (Warsaw, 2023), Bibeau Krueger (New York, 2022).